Women Entrepreneurs Who Inspire Us

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

A partner at Silicon Valley’s hottest VC firm, a website for the modern tough mama, and a passion for beauty meshed with bike safety: OZY’s profiles of women in business.

October 27, 2013

At OZY we make it our mission to bring you up close and personal with the people who are shaping the cultural conversation. Women in executive roles and entrepreneurs carving out new and innovative businesses of their own definitely fit the bill. If you’re looking for some wisdom to use at the office, or maybe a bit of inspiration to turn your own passion into a thriving business, these are worth your time.

Originally from Germany, Margit Wennmachers started out as a CEO’s assistant at an American tech company, but by 25 she was running the European marketing division. Today she’s an operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s sexiest, most desirable technology venture capital firms. She’s become known for putting the right people in touch, particularly at her dinner parties where reporters, investors and entrepreneurs mingle. She’s acknowleged as a marketing and PR mastermind, as well as a “strategic advisor” for top startups in the Valley.

When Michelle Tea was thinking about getting pregnant, she looked around at all the mothers’ magazines and websites available and just didn’t find anything that felt like a place for her. So she set out to create her own totally honest, utterly un-earnest, anything-goes kind of parenting publication, Mutha. “I wanted to show that there’s not necessarily this traditionally feminine definition of motherhood,” says Tea, “that it’s broader and tougher and more jumbled than that.” Amen.

Danielle Baskin was a cyclist who didn’t much care for wearing a helmet, until the streets of NYC convinced her otherwise. Not happy with the typical bulky, heavy helmet, she decided to make safety a lot more beautiful, and painted her own helmet with a blue sky and trees. It wasn’t long before other folks were looking for their own artistic helmets, and now she’s painted hundreds of Inkwell Helmets, in fanciful animals, fruits, and even an intricate phrenology chart. Maybe safety is the mother of invention.